Montreal Canadiens Should Just Send Mattias Norlinder Back to Sweden

The Montreal Canadiens season is already certain to end without a playoff game being played.

They began the year with five consecutive losses, scoring four goals in the process, and now sit at 6-17-3 and are near the bottom of the league standings. Playoff contention is out the window, and really, it was out the window before Halloween.

The rest of this season, and there are 56 games to go, should be about figuring out which veterans belong on the team long term and who can be traded for draft picks and prospects. Younger players should be given larger opportunities to see how they can handle bigger minutes at the NHL level.

Which brings us to Mattias Norlinder. He is a 21 year old left defenceman who was drafted in the third round of the 2019 NHL Draft. He has played pro hockey in Sweden for the past two years and has an out clause in his contract that he would return to Sweden if the Canadiens chose to send him down to the Laval Rocket.

It might be time for the Habs to just let him go back to Sweden.

It is not that Norlinder is struggling at the NHL level. In fact, his speed and quickness often stand out among an otherwise big and brutish blue line. There have been many times already in the six games he has played that Norlinder makes a quick turnaround in the defensive zone and moves the puck up ice. It is something that you just don’t see from Ben Chiarot, David Savard or Brett Kulak because they just don’t have the same speed that Norlinder does.

However, Norlinder is not being given much of an opportunity to show off that skillset.

He has played just six games this season and has been made a healthy scratch whenever the Canadiens have six other healthy defenders. Even when he gets into the lineup, he isn’t given much of an opportunity. In two of his last three games he has played less than ten minutes of ice time.

He also regularly gets passed over for power play duties in favour of Chiarot who is nothing more than a big, physical, shutdown defender.

Putting Norlinder in a place to succeed would be on a firing with a defensive player like David Savard and getting him well over 15 minutes per game. A little power play time for the smooth skating and offensive minded defenceman would make a lot of sense as well but it just isn’t happening.

There really is no point in having a 21 year old sitting on the end of the bench or in the press box. He could be playing regularly in Sweden, and developing his defensive game in one of the best hockey leagues in the world.

This season is already over for the Canadiens. The priority for a player like Norlinder should be to get him as ready for the beginning of the 2022-23 season as possible. That would either mean playing a lot at the NHL level, or playing every game in Sweden.

It’s time for the Canadiens to decide which path they will take with Norlinder for the rest of this season.